


The Commission's Children

by rokosourobouros



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Any or No Characters, Gen, The Commission, The Other 36 Children - Freeform, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23234515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokosourobouros/pseuds/rokosourobouros
Summary: Time-travelling assassins don't come out of thin air, and spontaneous superpowered children aren't born every day.
Relationships: Cha-Cha & Hazel (Umbrella Academy), Cha-Cha & The Handler & Hazel (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	The Commission's Children

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WingedFlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedFlight/gifts).



> I'm hoping this doesn't stray too far from your request! I've had this idea in my head for a while and when you asked about the other special children and the Commission, I couldn't help myself. 
> 
> (Also, the writing style was inspired by a book I read recently which you might enjoy - All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. I didn't realize until about halfway through that the book's style was leaking in, but hey, free rec!)

On the 12 th hour of the first day of October, 1989, forty-three babies were born, and the Commission managed to obtain eleven of them. This was more than Reginald Hargreeves had managed; that said, there were many more of them than there were of him, so the Handler considered this an embarrassment rather than an accomplishment. What was the point of time-travel technology if you couldn’t make a point of reaching your goals  _ before  _ anybody else?

Nevertheless, they had acquired eleven babies, unique specimens with no true mother or father. All the better. All of them were raised together in a building with barred doors and painted-over windows. They slept on hard bunks, and they ate plain porridge for their meals, with Spam on Wednesdays, and once a month – if they’d been good – they got a square of a Cadbury chocolate bar.

It was austere, but that was deliberate. One could not rise to an occasion, theorized the Handler, if there was nothing to rise to.

By the time the children were six, strange things had started happening. The headmistress awoke to discover that the stash of Cadbury bars was missing. When she asked her cadre of students if anybody had been prying around, they shook their heads, with identical smears of chocolate on their upper lip.

That was one incident. The second was far more puzzling. A cat had appeared in the building, and nobody could figure out how it had gotten there. Moreover, it only appeared at night. The children petted it and gave it food, especially since it never seemed afraid of them, and if any of them noticed which of their number was missing while the cat was present, they never said a word.

The Handler didn’t need their testimony. Her cameras had shown her Isabelle, summoning the chocolate bars from the cupboard into her waiting hands; they had shown her Marco, changing into a cat whenever the mood struck him and reveling in the attention of ten pairs of grubby hands.

On their seventh birthday, the doors were opened. The floor was scrubbed, and the children washed their faces and behind their ears. The Handler arrived, her bright lapis coat and snakeskin boots unseen finery in their dull school.

“I have a secret to tell you all. I brought you all here and raised you as my own-“ she didn’t really believe she was stretching the truth  _ that  _ much, for the Handler likely would have done this to her own children too – “-because you are all  _ very special  _ children. Everybody has something only they can do. Something unique and amazing. If you can show me what it is, I will take you for special training.”

The children looked at each other, sibling loyalty warring with the need to stand out, to be special. Finally, Marco stepped forward, and turned into a cat.

“Oh, wonderful!”

Isabelle showed off her summoning talents. “I can only do it with small things so far,” she said ruefully, and the Handler ruffled her dark-brown hair and promised that it would get better with practice. Emilia held her breath and turned invisible. Yennefer drew fire from the air, and it glinted off her canines as the Handler smiled in approval.

One by one, they acted. Only one refused, for she had nothing to show off. She didn’t react, nor did she cry when all ten of her siblings left, only briefly looking back at her and instead staring forward at the gleaming vistas of their future.

She was alone for two months. In those two months, she did everything she could to discover what her talent was. She tried to fly, and got a sprained ankle for her trouble. She tried to turn back time, and just gave herself a headache. She tried to read her headmistress’s mind, but the only thing she could hear was her own faint tinnitus.

Eventually, she got a new companion. It was another boy exactly her age, and her headmistress said that he had been ‘lost’. She didn’t know particularly what that meant. Besides, he wasn’t her brother. She didn’t  _ know  _ him.

When she heard him sniffling in the night, though, whatever small tender part of her heart was left took over. “What’s your name?” she asked finally. She hadn’t bothered before.

“H-Hazel.”

“I’m Charice.”

He sat up to look at her in the dim night-light’s cast. “Charice? That’s a weird name.”

“I know,” she said glumly. Then, on the spot, she decided that if she didn’t want to be Charice, she didn’t have to be. “My friends-“ -and this was a white lie, for she didn’t have any, but neither did he, “-call me Cha-Cha.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

\----

Hazel Burlington’s parents had, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, accepted him as their own. Maybe, his mother had reasoned, she had just not noticed her pregnancy. Maybe, reckoned his father, he was just counting the months wrong since he’d bedded his wife properly. (James Burlington was to discover later, long after Hazel was gone, that he was sterile anyway; even if he and Marina _had_ still been having sex, there was never any chance of a pregnancy.)

So Hazel – unlike most of the other 43 – had a fairly normal childhood. He went to daycare, and then to junior kindergarten. He was smart, ludicrously so, and this too his parents accepted.

Then Hazel began talking to animals. Everybody talked to animals, of course. Except, well, usually they did it in English. The chirping and growling and meowing that Hazel was able to make with his throat and mouth was… well, it was unsettling at best. How lucky for the Burlingtons that somebody with an occupational therapist license, a charmingly red smile and a concerned expression showed up at their door – indeed, they might have just ignored it as childish play otherwise. The occupational therapist diagnosed Hazel with some professional-sounding syndrome, and suggested that a month at her specialized clinic might do him some good.

The Burlingtons were – if not gullible, exactly, people who put enormous faith in the System. If the System could help their son, why not?

They never saw Hazel again. It was probably for the best. At least, that’s what they told themselves. The System had decided for them, and they accepted it – with misery, with grief, with sadness, yes, but they accepted it.

(Marina considered fighting for him back. She did. But her husband cajoled and comforted her, and she slipped back into a daze of mild alcoholism and anti-depressants. She’d never been particularly well, and she supposed Hazel would be happier with a better mother.)

\---

So in the end, the Commission had twelve of them. Born in 1989, raised outside of time and finally released into the Commission’s home time of the 1950s, they adjusted quickly. What options did they have?

Hazel was to be released from the school by his twelfth birthday. The indoctrination was going well – he’d forgotten his parents’ names, although not their voices, and he’d spend most of his life fighting with a strange, unplaceable restlessness, a feeling that he was due back home for dinner someplace else. And Cha-Cha…

Cha-Cha still did not know what her power was.

When Hazel’s twelfth birthday was abominably close, she had had enough. She could not bear the idea of being alone anymore – and so she threw a punch at Hazel, furious at him for abandoning her, for being better than her.

Hazel’s training was just as good as hers. So without even realizing it, he shoved her into the closest wall, and there was a snap as her neck broke.

“Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no –“ He rushed to her side, trying to remember everything he could about medicine. He hadn’t spoken to any animals but lab specimens for so long, and they couldn’t help him.

But Cha-Cha just sat up, snapped her head back into place and blinked like she was fending off a hangover.

“Well,” she said finally, “I feel better _now._ ”

\---

They were not partners for the entirety of their career. There were times in which Cha-Cha, or Hazel, were sent on missions on their own or with temporary partners.

Almost by accident, Hazel found out that – theoretically, he had a whole forty-two siblings. Forty-one aside from Cha-Cha.

He was tempted to find them. Perhaps they’d be a family. Perhaps when all of them were in the same room, despite their varying skin tones and heights and ethnicities, they’d discover how many of them had the same noses, or the same dimples, or the same little crooks at the edges of their eyebrows.

Then Hazel wondered what on earth he would possibly have to say to them.

It was better to leave it alone. So he did.

He did, that was, until the incident with Number Five. And then every moment of pity or weakness he’d ever shown, every moment of _I don’t belong here,_ added up at once.

\---

Cha-Cha wiped tears from her face where they mingled with blood. She was still indestructible, it appeared, even as it felt like her heart was being torn from her chest.

After all of that. After their entire lives. Her friendship with Hazel had come to an end with the grinding of brakes, the feeling of shattered glass under her hands, and the squealing of tires as Hazel vanished. This time, forever.

She had one thing left to do. The job. That was all that was left.

She approached the theater, and it was Diego who met her at the balcony. Diego, Number Two of the Hargreeves, somebody who – in another universe – she could have gone out for drinks with.

_Hello, brother,_ she thought, but didn’t say, as she drove her fist into his stomach.

The job was all that mattered. 


End file.
